In the recliner industry, more broadly in the motion seating furniture industry, it is conventional to provide chair or equivalent article of seating furniture with a base, and a seating construction mounted on the base by means of a mechanism which permits the user to move the seating construction, or part of it, in relation to the base, in order to selectively achieve each of two, three or more different positions. For instance, the seating construction may include a seat and arm frame unit, an ottoman, and a backrest. Such a recliner may have a fully upright condition, in which the backrest is erect and the ottoman is stowed, a TV position, in which the ottoman is fully projected but the backrest remains erect, or nearly so, and a fully reclined position, in which the ottoman remains fully projected and the backrest is reclined. The movement between positions is accomplished by operation of a system of mechanical linkages (a recliner chair mechanism) which also mounts the ottoman and backrest to the seat and arm frame unit, and the seat and arm frame unit to the base. In some constructions, the seat and arm frame unit translates forwardly and/or tilts front up/back down and/or raises or lowers relative to the base as the mechanism is operated. In some recliners, the seat and arm frame unit is rigidly mounted to the backrest, so that reclining is achieved by tilting that combined structure bodily.
The present invention is concerned with such seating furniture regardless of whether it is in the form of a free-standing one-seat chair, or a one-armed one-seat modular unit for use with other modules as part of a modular sofa grouping, or a connected end unit of a multiple-seat article of seating furniture, such as a love seat or sofa. The term "recliner" or reclining chair is used herein as being generic to all such articles.
Although there are some recliner chairs in which one "pushes off the arms", (i.e., sits in the chair and pushes back on the backrest with ones back while grasping the chair arms and pushing forwards on them), such chairs have known limitations (after a certain amount of use, they may, when unoccupied, tend to assume a partly reclined condition instead of a fully erect condition, because their joints have gotten loose and nothing is available to latch the parts in a fully erect position). Accordingly, most recliner chairs make use of an actuator to initiate and/or control operation of the mechanism for reclining and/or erecting the chair, and the actuator provides a latch for defining the fully erect condition of the chair.
In recent years, there have been at least two waves of popularity of electrically operated recliner chairs, ones having a motorized mechanism the electrical drive motor for which is operated using a switch which may be mounted on the inside, outside or front of an arm of the chair. The present invention relates, rather, to non-electrical manually operated mechanisms.
The lost common actuators for recliners are: a large crank handle on the outside of the left or right arm of the chair (usually near the floor, but within grasp of a typical person seated in the chair), a similar but smaller release handle, a push botton (located somewhere on one of the chair arms, e.g., on the inner side, outer side, front or top of an arm), and a ring pull release protruding up between a side edge of the seat cushion and an arm.
Some of the diversity in type and placement of actuators is due to the fact that each of the conventionally used actuators has drawbacks, and so recliner designers have constantly attempted to find a better way to actuate a recliner mechanism. Protruding handles work well, but can bark shins and can catch on many objects as a chair is moved. They constrain a chair's design, since their medially directed leg must rotate about its own longitudinal axis and not translate relative to the chair arm as the handle is rotated, in order to permit upholstering of the chair arm.
Inside arm handles, push buttons and ring-pull actuators find use in certain instances, but some consumer's shown chairs having such actuators, because the actuators are too difficult for them to find and operate when seated in such chairs.
Prior art push button-type actuators have found limited acceptance, because many of them protrude too far, provide limited travel and thereby limited drive transmitted to the chair mechanism and/or are difficult to push.